ABSTRACT
In Mozart's day, the sonata was typically a domestic genre, he was playing this and other sonatas from the same set in his concerts, which were to some extent, public affairs. Moreover, he recorded the sonata in notated, reproducible form, and when a listener encounters the piece in a performance, what is happening is that a performer is enacting a physical encounter with the notated score in order to convert it into sound which the listener perceives. The first movement of the B flat Sonata K.281 challenges the listener with a considerable variety of material within the exposition. Mozart himself was once a listener, of course: his scores inscribe the act of Mozart listening to himself thinking. They are not themselves the Music; rather, they are a kind of choreography whose pitches, durations, articulations, dynamics, tempos, characters, textures and gestures unite composer, performer and listener in creative and re-creative musical action.
